In general, block toys are to build structures of various forms when a user assembles a plurality of three-dimensional assembly blocks with each other, so that the block toys provide children with various educational effects and are widely used as playthings which allow the user to creatively make various models.
Moreover, block toys make the user feel pleasure obtained through an assembling process and a sense of accomplishment through the process to make a special structure by assembling the blocks, which are unit structures of a simple form, as the user intended, increase the user's intellectual capacity through a training to design and make a three-dimensional structure, and have good influences, such as enhancement of cognitive skills and body development, on infants or children.
Such block toys have various three-dimensional shapes of the simplest form, such as polyprisms, cylinders, polypyramids, cones and many-sided panels, made of wood or synthetic resin, and the user can use the block toy by building up the blocks.
In the meantime, differently from the built-up type block toy, block toys using magnets as combining means for blocks have been developed and gain a lot of popularity recently. Such magnetic block toys having the magnets each of which is arranged at the end portion thereof and has the N pole and the S pole are assembled into structures of various forms by combining fixed blocks by a medium of magnetic metal materials.
The following cited reference 1 discloses an example of such technology.
The cited reference 1 discloses a magnetic block toy including: a metallic magnet part having magnets arranged at both end portions; a pair of synthetic resin bodies having a receiving space to which the metallic magnet part can be accommodated and bonded in such a way that a part of the magnet is exposed to the outside when the synthetic resin bodies are coupled oppositely; a magnetic block toy stick having claw coupling parts which are disposed at end portions opposed to each other of the synthetic resin bodies to claw hold of the synthetic resin bodies; and a plurality of metal members magnetically bonded to both end portions of the magnetic block toy stick.
The conventional block toy has an assembly structure to be manufactured through a simple manufacturing process, is simple and easy in assembly, thereby being manufactured in a way that is easier and more convenient than the conventional methods and preventing the magnet from being separated to the outside.
However, such a conventional technology has a disadvantage in that the assembled structure may be easily collapsed or distorted and it is difficult to maintain the assembled structure for a long time because the blocks are built up or assembled into three-dimensional structures because the blocks depend on nothing but the combining force of the magnets.